A young woman who had no scalp or eyebrow hair for years now enjoys a full mane after using a novel cream devised by researchers at Yale School of Medicine.

The 17-year-old patient suffered from alopecia areata, a disfiguring autoimmune disease that affects tens of millions of people worldwide and has limited treatment options. Alopecia areata may cause spotty hair loss or complete loss of scalp hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and all other body hair. The patient in this study, published Dec. 9 in JAMA Dermatology, had tried multiple treatments with no success.